Hard to believe it’s been so long, but it was almost 4 years ago when I published Join the Dark Side of Visual Studio. That was when a lot of people were still using VS2003, and importing and exporting environment settings required a custom add-in, VSStyler, which has since fallen off the planet and is hard to find (link, anyone? Let me know). Three versions of VS later, and I’m still using and loving the dark side. Pleased, I am (haha). In fact, that article for one reason or another is still one of my most popular blog entries, thanks in part to a link from Scott Hanselman and a commenter on Coding Horror. I will point out selfishly that my article predates both of these :) But, yes, it’s sad when one of your top referrers is from a link in a comment on another blog. Not even the first comment, either.

.NET Framework 4 Beta 2 has been out for a little while now. There are some subtle improvements to the ScriptManager control in ASP.NET 4.0 that few have picked up on yet. Allow me to introduce you to them! First, let me say that this is strictly about features in the server-side ASP.NET ScriptManager control, not the Ajax library in general. Also – if you do not use the ASP.NET Ajax library but you are a WebForms developer, I assume you, this article is still for you!

Preview 5 of the Microsoft Ajax 4.0 library has been released. Some quick background – this the next version of the client-side ajax framework you have probably already heard of, the one that ships along with ASP.NET 3.5 (but is also available in script form). The fact it ships with ASP.NET has sometimes led to it being called the ASP.NET AJAX Framework. Technically, that name is a superset – it encompasses “Microsoft Ajax” and it’s ASP.NET specific, server-side features, like the ScriptManager. But “Microsoft Ajax” always has and always will be an ajax framework that is not tied to any specific server-side technology. Also noteworthy is that this 4.0 library can run on top of ASP.NET 3.5, replacing the 3.5 version it normally uses.

There’s a lot of debatethesedays about the ASP.NET WebForms model vs. the newer ASP.NET MVC model. There are advantages to both. Disadvantages to both. Pick the one that best fits your needs. Nuff said. But sometimes that choice isn’t so obvious.

Looking for an ASP.NET AJAX book? This one has been massively updated from its 2.0 version, to cover in detail the features added in 3.5, and not to be forgotten, 3.5 SP1. For example, Script Combining was a new feature in 3.5 SP1, and so was History support, so it's an important distinction! The 2.0 book was 307 pages, and this one is 552. History support, by the way, has a dedicated chapter. Script combining is a major portion of the chapter on the ScriptManager.

I ran into an interesting and unexpected behavior in ASP.NET AJAX event handling the other day. Once I figured out what was going on, I was almost positive it was a bug, so I started looking into what a solution would be. But just out of curiosity, I looked at what the behavior was for a server-side event. Much to my surprise, the behavior was the same. The behavior then was consistent with the server-side behavior, not a bug. But is it the "correct" behavior? Tell me what you think...